For best results use Chrome or Safari. Firefox works but a little choppy. Internet Explorer doesn't work. Minimum screen resolution of 1280 width 800 height. iPhone and iPad can be used as a controller using swipe gestures.

For fun factor, 3 - 6 players is a nice sweet spot :-)

Go to http://nodekick.com on your computer. If you log in via twitter, you can use the arrow keys to control your player:

To begin, **press the Up Arrow** to spawn your player. Then:
Up Arrow: jumps up/respawn, Left Arrow: kicks/turns left, Right Arrow: kicks/turns right

Fun game :) I like that it was kept so simple. There's a bit of strategy to the kicks. Knowing which character was mine was a bit confusing; It took a few games to see the floating avatar at the bottom. The realtime is a bit slow, it's unresponsive to my keyboard events and feels frustrating. The voices are awesome.

We have 3 sprites, that are selected based on your twitter handle. Heisenberg (or XKCD's Black Hat Guy), Donatello (from the Ninja Turtles), and a character named "Dive". We wanted to do a character selection screen, but ran out of time.

You may have experienced some lag. It depends on websockets and a lot of data is passing to keep the screens in sync. However, it might be a feature we added. Everytime someone is killed it switches into bullet-time mode and slows down the whole game.

Thanks! Yea we think the phone control feature is great as a kind of "party mode" with many people on one screen. Character selection was definitely on our to-do list, we just didn't get there in time.

"Game had some severe lag / choppiness for me on latest"
That's very surprising :-( The game cranks out at 60 frames per second. Perhaps try again later? We tested the game on both chrome and safari and it was "buttery smooth". We've had some player have issues with websockets, but it was caused by them being behind a proxy.

"even get the controls to feel natural with just myself in the arena."
I'll be online for the next few hours if you'd like to jump on and play an opponent. The control scheme is as follows: press the up arrow (or swipe up) to jump, while in the air you can press the left and right arrows (or swipe left/right) to do a downward kick. If you die, press the up arrow again to respawn your character.

"I really like how my character looked like heisenberg with that hat."
We have 3 sprites, that are selected based on your twitter handle. Heisenberg (or XKCD's Black Hat Guy), Donatello (from the Ninja Turtles), and a character named "Dive". We wanted to do a character selection screen, but ran out of time.

"No special combos?"
There are no combos. The depth of the game comes when players start thinking about spacing and how to bait opponents into attacking. There are a few other techniques like short hopping (where you jump, but very quickly press left or right to attack), which does an incredible job of getting into someone's head.

"How are the points calculated and do you ever actually die?"
You get one point for every kill you make against an opponent. The game keeps a persisted score (associated with your twitter handle). We have quite a few players that have passed 1000 kills :-).

The server is pumping out 60fps of websockets so faster than that wouldn't do you any good. But yeah, if you are slower than that, you might be at a disadvantage. When using my phone as a remote control I sometimes notice more lag than on the desktop. Being on wifi helps that a lot though.

Consistently low latency definitely gives you an edge, There's a branch in the project that has low-overhead netcode, but it feels a little choppier since we didn't have time to implement proper interpolation. Thanks for the feedback!

Be sure to try using your phone as a controller. Go to nodekick.com and swipe up to spawn your character. After that you can swipe up to jump and swipe left and right to attack. It's a good way for a group of people to share one screen and use their phones to play :-)

On the innovation angle. Take a look at the demo video. We added the ability to use a mobile device as a controller :-)

As for design. We used only two assets from a freely distributed art pack. The rest of the images, stages and characters were hand drawn by Eric. I did the voiceovers using Audacity's pitch and reverb effects.

Woah, so I'm not a typical gamer, so maybe it was just me, but I was super overwhelmed by everything that was going on in this game. There were some nice touches that I liked, including the sound and the backgrounds changing, but otherwise it was just a typical fighting game that was quite similar to divekick without the twists.

I think that the characters might take up too much space on the screen when you have so many people playing, my screen started to get laggy when I had a bunch of people playing at the same time.

EDIT:

Whooooaa, I just watched your video , I didn't realize you could use your phone. That makes it a lot cooler. giving you Two extra points in utility / innovation, although you could do a better job of messaging in the app.

You may have experienced some lag. It depends on websockets and a lot of data is passing to keep the screens in sync. However, it might be a feature we added. Everytime someone is killed it switches into bullet-time mode and slows down the whole game. This is a really nice effect when 2 or three people are playing but not when six or seven are. At that point it looks like lag because people are dying constantly. If there were a number of people playing when you did, try again when there aren't as many and tell us how much lag you get. I'm curious.

Wow, there's a ton of polish in this. Love the changing backgrounds, fun sound design and capture of all the edge cases. The mobile app was really crazy too. I had to knock a point off for completeness since I ran into some weird bugs and had to refresh after a bit.

It was fun to play for a bit, but I can't see myself coming back again and again. Maybe if you added powerups?

I personally like one on one battles more than the chaos of lots of people. You start thinking a lot about spacing and how to bait your opponent into attacking. There are quite a few veteran players now (read as addicted gamers). Definitely try a one one one match and see if you find it more fun :-)

Thanks :-) Be sure to try using your mobile device as a controller. All you have to do is got to the nodekick.com on your phone, log in with twitter and swipe up to spawn your character. You'll be able to use the computer screen as a "tv" :-) ... having multiple people play with controllers and one screen was our innovation angle.

Our goal was to make a simple easy to pick up fighting game. Also, we wanted to incorporate phones with touch/swipe capabilities. Having a simple control scheme allowed us to have some nice swipe motions (up, left, right) to control the character.

Glad you liked it! Our goal was to make a simple easy to pick up fighting game. Also, we wanted to incorporate phones with touch/swipe capabilities. Having a simple control scheme allowed us to have some nice swipe motions (up, left, right) to control the character.

The interesting thing about this game is there is some amazing depth to the game play. A few of the players have literally over 1000 kills and have become very good at baiting, spacing, and baiting (jumping without attacking) All important techniques in the game. :-)

Be sure to try using a phone that supports touch. You can bring up the game on a computer and use your phone as a controller. Just navigate to nodekick.com on the phone and swipe upwards to spawn your character :-)

Glad you liked it. It can get pretty crazy with more users. The art and voice overs were all done by the team except for one of the player sprites and a logo (which was taken from a freely available art pack). You can also use a phone that supports swipe gestures as a controller. Having one screen with multiple people on the phone was something we felt was pretty nice :-)

Glad you liked it. You can use your phone as a controller (if it supports swipe gestures). So you can have the game up on your monitor and log in with your phone, swipe upwards to spawn and then use that as your controller.

Design-wise, it would have been nicer if there were more original artwork. It kind of looks like many things were copy pasta'd and thrown together :( It's perfectly understandable for a weekend project, but I just got to keep it fair for everyone :p

The artwork was actually done by Eric. He used a drawing tablet :-), the voice overs were done by me using audacity. Cliff and Casey did the web design. We used one sprite and one logo from an art pack. But the rest was all hand made :-)

Did you try to use the phone as a controller? You may find that to be pretty innovative. One screen up and multiple people on the phone using swipe gestures :-) (log in with your phone and swipe up to spawn)

Safari is fine. The iOS device is a controller (so you still need a computer pointing to nodekick.com). Swipe upwards to spawn. Then afterwards you should be able to swipe left to kick left and swipe right to kick right.

Ha yes! I wasn't spawning... kept seeing the guy flash on my phone's screen as I swept left and right and figured it wasn't connecting correctly. Swiping up spawns and then the controls work correctly. Thanks for helping out.